


Legacy

by starsandsupernovae



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Post Infinity Wars, Tony Stark Angst, Tony Stark Feels, so lots of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12207072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandsupernovae/pseuds/starsandsupernovae
Summary: Tony Stark’s funeral. Lots of talks lots of speeches, especially from the other avengers. But there’s someone there who wants to make sure that they get it right.





	Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by tumblr post https://tin-can-iron-man.tumblr.com/post/165784875769/the-flightoficarus-i-seem-to-be-on-a-roll-with   
> I hope you like, please leave a comment and let me know what you think

Peter knew he should feel something. Grief, anger perhaps. But as he sat there, listening to yet another dry speech, this time from one of Tony’s ‘teammates’ one of those who had abandoned him before running back when they needed help Peter realized he felt nothing. No feelings, no emotions, just a vast emptiness within him. He looked around him, at Pepper who was in tears although she tried to conceal them, at James who’s eyes were red rimmed although he stood stoic, at Happy, who looked as though he had completely fallen apart, and wondered vaguely what was wrong with him. Because however much he tried to tell 

himself it was real, it was final, he couldn’t quite believe it. He still expected him to show up, a smirk on his face, and ask what all the fuss was about. He still expected him to fly up when Peter was trying to do something stupid, and tell him off.

He wouldn’t have liked this, Peter thought dully, these endless speeches from men with whom he spoke once a week with in business meetings, empty words from those who he had fought alongside who thought they had known him.  
There was a silence, the stream of empty words flowing from the speaker’s mouth mouth cut off. He was about to look back down, to fall back into the timeless, space less void he had been stuck in, thinking the speaker had just finished but realized he was wrong. Someone who was sitting further down, had gotten up and spoken a man, no a boy, who repeated himself loudly, the words bursting from his throat-

“I’d like to say something”

A murmur rippled through the crowd as people looked him up and down and wondered who he was, this boy who thought he could just get up and speak, interrupting the hero who was speaking. He looked familiar, he knew him from somewhere else and he couldn’t figure it out. It bothered him, an itch in his mind that he longed to scratch as he began to speak.

“And I’d like to say it about Tony Stark. The real Tony Stark not the plastic version you’re mourning, not the figurehead you tried to force him to be.” He was almost spitting out the words, and Peter could almost feel the raw anger flowing off him. “I’d like to speak about the man who gave everything, every last part of himself to others. I’d like to speak about the man who I met, years ago when he walked into my life, the life of a penniless, pathetic child, and spoke with him, really spoke with him because that’s who Anthony Edward Stark was. And he payed for this child’s education, not just paving the way for scholarships but creating new ones. And now this child is in the top class at MIT.”

And suddenly Peter knew where he knew the boy from. Because he remebered now, a picture Tony had had in his office, of him and the Harley Keener first recipient of the Stark Scholarship. Tony had had lots of pictures like that, him and the recipient of this charity or that. But there were only two pictures in his office, and this one was one of them. The other, the other Peter remembered, was of him, a snapshot someone had randomly grabbed of Tony and the intern he seemed to favor.

“And I can’t thank him properly. I never could. Because that’s not how he worked. He just gave and gave and gave and everyone took him for granted and no one gave him the gratitude he deserved. And I always thought, at some point, I’m going to tell him, I’m going to thank him, when I’m good enough, when I’ve done more, not now not yet. And now it’s too late.”

It was like the words were a punch directly into the dam Peter had constructed in his mind and suddenly the feelings he hadn’t been allowing himself to feel deluged him, and he felt the tears well up in his dry eyes as Harley continued relentless.

“Because none of us can speak to him anymore. And he can’t speak to us. He’s not here. But if he was I can be damned sure he would be disgusted with this, with you trying to make his business, or the people he’s fought his only legacy. Because Tony Stark’s legacy, his true legacy, is all the people he’s saved, all the penniless pathetic children he gave opportunities to, all of the people we can now help." 

He stopped abruptly and Peter could see him swallow hard, struggling to continue and he felt himself stand up, heard words being spoken in a voice he realized was his own.

"I was one of those children as well. And I also never got to thank him properly, and now I never will. But I can also defend his legacy, of educating, of helping, of caring. Tony Stark was more then just an inventor to us, more then a sponsor.” He too paused, looking over at Harley, who wan’t even attempting to stop the flow of tears now, and they said the next words together, to each other, as though there was no one else there, as though it was just the two boys and the memory of the man to whom they both owed so much. “He was a father.”


End file.
